Gothic Granola

Fun fact, Gothic Granola isn't dead.  Neither am I.  I've been Instagramming my creations but haven't been blogging as I've been creative writing and working on other projects.  Since November 2015 , I have made several kinds of vice cream (vegan ice cream) including: Chocolate Rocky road Mint chocolate chip Pistachio Cherry chocolate chip Kind of whippy vanilla (that's a lot like coco whip )

Ginger Orange Booze Cookies, that is.  While I had real ginger in the house, and could have coloured them orange with real turmeric root, I followed TC's suggestion and made a ginger liqueur and triple sec chocolate chip cookie.  Sweetened with agave, vegan, gluten-free, slow-food, housemade, local... No, I'm not trying to up my SEO. I'm being ironic.    

Tiny Carrot! All the kale is gone from the garden; it got eaten by bugs. And now the apartment is filled with ladybugs--where were you a few weeks ago? I also pulled up some tiny beets; clearly the root veggies need more time underground.

More strawberries and chocolate chips this week. My harshest critic was in town and TC asked me to make him a "moist" baked good (AKA: my other father-in-law, Bandit the dog's owner).

When Greek yoghurt became popular a few years ago (or to use my husband's phrase, it "blew up"), naturally bakers of all stripes put it in their products. Three tablespoons, though, is superfluous. It's not enough to add flavor or a preponderance of acidity to make a cake rise, especially when the leavening agent is baking powder, not the basic (as in pH, for all of you who failed chemistry) baking soda ( Na HCO 3 ). But I may just be an old vegan codger. Greek yoghurt does make good traditional cheesecake, and I used to eat a lot of it before I became lactose-intolerant. Anyway, strawberries were on sale at Lucky's.

 I found this recipe years ago (2010) soon after becoming vegan. I brought home some agave nectar from the Whole Earth Center in Princeton since I had switched to natural and vegan sweeteners. The picture on the source website looks nothing like the finished product. Although, I suppose if you used the full 1/2 cup of canola oil, the cookies would spread. Did I mention I was also hypersensitive (mentally) about using too much fat in recipes in 2010, too?

National Chocolate Chip Day is another one of those made-up holidays that must have been made just for bloggers. Actually, I'm pretty sure it's been around since before the Internet since most sites about it seem to reference the original chocolate chip cookie . NCCD is 15 May, and my post is a day late. I went to see Mad Max: Fury Road on Thursday (the other day I usually blog) and didn't decide what to bake for NCCD until yesterday afternoon.

Vegans go to some extreme lengths to make food that resembles animal products. Just challenge someone to go vegan or give up alcohol and you will see the deep emotional bonds humans form with certain food preparations (goat cheese! applewood-smoked bacon! craft beer! mom's apple pie!).    This is some kind of chicken? Or sausage? According to my family, it was tasty...for dead flesh. /vegansnark

What you label wheat flour in a half-GF household: POISON!

These cookies are foundation, fundamental to a world of delicious vegan and gluten-free "vanilla dough and stuff" cookies, not base as in immoral.    

VNV Nation is the official dishwashing music of Gothic Granola.   There's nothing particular about Ronan Harris and Mark Jackson's synthpop that makes me want to wash dishes; their music has a way of keeping up my momentum. I don't have any issues with dishwashing motivation, but I like music while I work.

  This town has become progressively buried under snow. Despite it being Colorado, high elevation, blah blah blah, northwestern New Jersey still has more snow and colder temperatures. "I like winter/ I like snow/ I like icy winds that blow." NAME THAT CHILDREN'S BOOK!*

I'm not a fan of baking with protein powder, for the record. The " Shakeology Cookies " I made this time last year tasted odd and sharply fake-sweet. The stevia and other low-calorie sweeteners in most protein powders just don't set well with me either raw (by themselves) or baked. These brownies are good, in theory, when you're looking for a substantial but sweet snack, and the texture became almost cheesecake-like. I haven't been impressed with the vanilla blended Sun Warrior protein powder, and it's still pretty gross in brownie form, too. So use whatever protein powder, preferably chocolate, that you already like. Since I used vanilla powder, the brownies were not as chocolate-coloured as they could be.  

These peanut butter oatmeal protein balls have been taking over the interwebs. I put my own twist on the recipes found in Dr. Phoenyx's Instagram and Gimme Some Oven .  

I learned a trick this week, and I'm going to extrapolate several explanations for why it works.[1] Then I came up with a tea drink, and a way to make my date-based chocolate syrup.

National Cookie Day is 4 December, which also happens to be an important date in the novel I've been writing since 2006. If you know me in person, you know that I like vampires: old-school, bloodsucking, remorseless, Dracula, Carmilla, The Vampire Lestat type of vampires. None of this Twilight wishy-washy stuff, a little Charlaine Harris (haven't read much of her work, but from what I hear...). Some Hemlock Grove as well, though that book (and excellent Netflix series) is about werewolves, which are cool, too. Back to the point. We need food for the brain as much as we do food for the body. Creativity for me (writing, beading, recipe R&D) feeds me, too. And I like vampires.

I actually don't have a sermon screed today, which probably means one is brewing. I finished Beachbody INSANITY for the second time this morning. Like a customer at WFM said last year, it's harder the second time around. Indeed. This time, though, I didn't go as extreme, and I don't think the absence of INSANITY will make me go, well, insane. I plan to finish September with Blogilates  and yoga. October I will do the Blogilates October workout calendar, and since I'm used to doing an hour workouts, I'll do all the videos each day. November I may do P90X all the way through since I exercise outside and I may have to move indoors, for which P90X is perfect.  

**GOTHIC GRANOLA PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT** This blog is in a serious state of reconstruction. We have switched from Blogger to Wordpress thanks to the patient and thorough guidance of Jason at Site Image Studios . Themes will change pretty much daily. It's like shopping for clothes...no, wait, shopping for clothes is way more straightforward. Jason made the technical side of transferring the GG domain to a different registrar, setting up my email, and configuring Google Apps utterly painless. My site will be ready to expand should I use it for health coaching as well, and I have more features than ever before. Gothic Granola lives on, thanks to Site Image Studios!     Toys! My Polly Pocket restaurant set from 1992 or 1993 looks like a burger restaurant. But it’s vegan and gluten-free. Literally, because it is plastic. Literally, because there’s nothing to eat, just like at a vegan and gluten-free place. Hah. No, it's vegan and gluten-free because I say so. Good veggie burg...

The first time I made this recipe, I soaked the dates and it ended up as this: frosting, which I used on my 22nd birthday cake. The second and third times, I wised up and kept things dry to make raw chocolate...stuff...fudge...freezer snacks.

The first time I made this recipe, I soaked the dates and it ended up as this: frosting, which I used on my 22nd birthday cake. The second and third times, I wised up and kept things dry to make raw chocolate...stuff...fudge...freezer snacks.